Lucas and the Eight of Cups

Lucas beat his already bruised fist weakly against the door. It stung, but he wouldn’t stop until they reached some kind of resolution here, for better or worse. This was not how tonight was supposed to go. “Open the door, Liam,” he said hoarsely. “Talk to me.”

“I’m done talking, Lucas,” came Liam’s voice muffled by the door. He must have been on the other side of the room judging by the volume, though his frantic tone was so loud and clear he might as well be right next to Lucas. “I think we’ve already said enough.”

“Actually, I have a lot more to say!” Lucas shouted as he beat against the door again. “I came all the way here, and I’m not done arguing with you.”

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed before Lucas knew he would have to change tactics. This was going nowhere, so he needed to cool the situation enough for Liam to open the damn door. “You’ll have to leave that room at some point,” Lucas said. “I’ll wait you out if I have to!”

Though it was quiet and a dense wooden door separated the two of them, the static noise of the tension was incredibly loud. Lucas could hear that Liam was just as freaked out as he was, that both of them vibrated at the same nervous frequency that felt more like an ear ringing than the usual harmony they shared. It was painfully discordant. That nervousness was a good sign. It’s what made Lucas think they might be able to work this out.

“Let me in, Liam,” he said as he pressed his forehead against the door.

Liam’s tone softened, turned contemplative. Lucas heard him cross the room and felt the door jolt slightly and unlock. It opened and revealed a man that looked even more disheveled than when Lucas saw him last. The torture of the moment turned his dark blue eyes red and puffy from crying, his cheeks flushed, and his shaggy brown hair stuck out at the sides from pulling his hair in frustration. It had been a long night already, and it wasn’t even eight in the evening. “Finally,” Lucas attempted sarcasm to lighten the mood. “Can I come in?”

“Please, Lucas,” Liam pleaded, pain in his voice. “Don’t joke. This is serious.”

“Ok, but you locked yourself in a room, so it feels like I’m the only one taking this fight or discussion or whatever you want to call it seriously.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Liam said, incredulous.

“You just said not to!”

“Don’t take me so literally.”

“Only when you start making some fucking sense!”

“I think I’ve made myself pretty clear, Lucas! You just don’t want to hear it.” Liam’s nervousness had turned sour, his tone shifted into a grating frustration like a fork running along a plate. Lucas couldn’t help feeling himself getting swept along.

“You’re right. I don’t want to hear whatever the fuck you convinced yourself to believe.” A sick frustration took root in Lucas’s chest. “I need you to be real with me. If you were so set on being done with this, then you would have already told me to leave. What are you waiting for?”

“Fuck off, Lucas.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, I want you to leave now.”

“I did not come here just for you to shout at me and leave. Why did you even let me in here if we’re just going to be stuck running around the same circles?”

“To tell you to your face that we can’t do this anymore,” Liam said softly. “I felt like I owed you that.”

Lucas felt his heart beat faster, his own frustration turning to fear as Liam’s tone took a nosedive. He couldn’t let this happen. “So, what? You’re just done? All of this was for nothing, then?”

Liam turned on Lucas, his tone jolted and swung to anger. “I do have the unfortunate luxury of getting to choose what to do with my life, Lucas! I’m not like you! And some of us have to do things for ourselves, even if we don’t want like it.”

“But you can choose something different!” Lucas felt like he was losing his mind. The shifts in tone disoriented him and he could barely keep track, but he had to keep trying. “You can choose me.”

“Don’t, Lucas.” Liam snapped, but his tone softened from a piercing anger to frustration, the undertone of a deep sadness lurked and waited to swallow them booth. “I need you to respect me enough to accept my decision.”

“No!” Lucas choked out. Fuck, he couldn’t keep from being swept up in the cacophony, but if this was the end he had to lay all his cards on the table. “I love you, Liam. For the past three years, I have loved you. Or for nearly as long but that’s not the fucking point,” he faltered. “You can’t act like you don’t feel the same way! So, don’t tell me to fuck off when I know that’s not what you want. I can hear it! You don’t want this!”

Liam wouldn’t look up from his wringing his hands and fidgeting with something Lucas couldn’t see, but he was too far in to stop now. He was begging at this point, but he didn’t care. He continued, “We can be together. And it doesn’t have to be here! We could go away! Somewhere quiet, you know? Who gives a fuck?”

“I give a fuck!” Liam yelled out, that piercing angry tone ringing again as he knocked over a side table. A lamp fell and crashed to the floor, along with a couple of glasses that spilled what smelled like alcohol onto the rug. “I don’t want to live like this, Lucas! I don’t want to have to hide because you couldn’t bring yourself to leave Elena. And as much as your father wants to destroy my life, I get to do it on my terms. Not his.”

Liam stumbled over to one of the windows, the drawn curtains muffled the downpour of rain from a surprise spring storm. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated Liam. Tears streamed down his face, and even in what felt like this inevitable heartbreak Lucas thought he was perfect. Barely a week ago, they were in this very room giggling with each other over a glass of wine, planning a vacation up north to ski in Vladivostok. Thunder rumbled in the distance, rattling the window.

“We’ve already done a hell of a job trying to be quiet about this” Liam continued. Lucas winced at the venom in his words. “People have been hounding my family for days after your dearly beloved left you and your father started his deranged revenge. I can’t leave the house, I haven’t slept for days, I can barely eat, and my name is getting dragged through the mud because your fucking family framed me as some home wrecker that fucked your fiancé! Everybody hates me! It feels a little late to fix that, don’t you think?”

Liam’s tone was erratic, frantic and uneven, a tumultuous slew of emotions roiling in his mind that made him impossible to read. One wrong move and it was all over. Lucas would leave this house and never be allowed back in. He wanted to be with Liam so badly he physically ached. How could he not see that this was their chance to leave all the shit with his father, his family, Elena, all of it behind? They had each other, and they could be together like they had always talked about. What once seemed impossible could now become a reality.

“Please… I can’t lose you,” Lucas’s voice lowered to a hoarse whisper. “I love you.”

An agonizingly long silence passed before Liam finally turned back towards Lucas. The franticness of his tone had flatlined, and for a fleeting moment Lucas felt a glimmer of hope that things would work out. But he saw Liam’s face, the tear soaked eyes, and heard a foreboding undertone of despair that paralyzed Lucas with fear. Liam held something in his clenched hand. Lucas was woefully unprepared for what came next.

“I can love you and still not want this, Lucas,” Liam croaked out as he gestured around at nothing, face contorted to keep from sobbing. “I don’t want to be locked up in a cage like you are, no matter where that cage may be.”

Liam barely choked out his last words, “ I can’t do this. I won’t.”

Liam slipped on the ring he had held all night, and his tone vanished from Lucas’ awareness. He could only stand there stunned by the silence that now radiated from Liam, like he wasn’t even there. Whatever magic was in this ring, Lucas was now completely cut off. Several quick attempts to reach into Liam’s mind were immediately repelled, and all the while Liam stood his ground. Barely able to keep himself together, Lucas fled the room.

The walls closed in on Lucas as he stumbled through the halls of this beautiful house he and Liam had planned to live in together before the engagement to Elena wrecked everything. Now it was just another cage like his own home and the castle in Costa Brava, like the inescapable life that now awaited him. Fuck, how could he even go back home to his father’s wrath at the broken engagement with Elena, back to a life that required his own as fuel, where he would have to lie his way through heartbreak while his family destroyed Elena’s and Liam’s lives? Elena was already being publicly shamed for her alleged infidelity with Liam, who had wrecked the royal engagement by sleeping with the prince’s bride-to-be. It was all a conspiracy to humiliate the crown, orchestrated by the Artés and Marsilla families. Lucas knew he couldn’t keep both of them away from the fallout and now he couldn’t help either of them. Lucas had chosen Liam and had come here to commit to the only real love he had ever felt. His mother’s ring hung heavy in his pocket, now a dead weight he wasn’t sure he could carry.

In a daze, Lucas had wandered outside into the rain soaked courtyard of an empty conservatory. What little light crept along the slick stone of the courtyard from the door still hanging open into the house. The cold rain from dark storm clouds pelted the glass roof behind him and ran in small rivers through the courtyard into a pond. Lucas was soaked the second he stepped outside but it was the least of his worries. The physical noise of running water was a welcome sound as Lucas desperately struggled to keep his mind tethered. Lightning struck uncomfortably nearby, followed quickly by thunder that rattled the glass behind him.

This was it. After all these years, this was it. Friendship that had become more, then hushed meetings, then secret kisses stolen in the heat of the moment, and sharing the only relationship Lucas had ever felt was genuine and real. And now it was over. Once he left this place he would leave behind the only person he ever loved, and Lucas couldn’t bear that he, more than likely, would never see Liam again.

Frantically, Lucas tore down the walls around his mind and opened himself up to the horrible noise that had plagued him his whole life. He heard the attendants laughing and playing some game over in the main hall. He heard Sean’s concerned panic as he searched for Lucas around the estate. He heard the horses that anxiously moved around the stalls from the thunder, a bird that sheltered from the rain in a tree nearby, a hungry rat, a frightened family of rabbits, another bird, another person, the pity from Liam’s bodyguard that faded at the very edges of his ability to hear tones. But nowhere could he find Liam. He was gone from his reach now. And as Lucas leaned against the courtyard railing he did the only thing he could do, so he cried and tried to let out all the pain he had been feeling all night.

The rain stopped suddenly, the last drops continued to ripple the surface of the water in the fountain and splatter along the courtyard railing. No, it had just stopped falling on him. Lucas mind was so clouded with noise he hadn’t even heard Sean approach, who now stood with an umbrella in hand over Lucas, his face emotionless. He reached into his bag, handing Lucas a cloak to drape over his soaked clothes. “If you’re out here any longer you’ll be sick, kid. I don’t want you acting like a child tomorrow.”

Lucas’s immediate defensiveness was meek at best, and faded just as quickly as it came. He said nothing and took the cloak. Lucas wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he had come out here. The cold had already set in his bones and the extra warmth from the cloak was welcome, as was hearing Sean’s familiar, subdued tone. Lucas always wondered what Sean was feeling. By the time he was old enough to care what others felt about him and could peek into people’s thoughts, Sean had already built up the mental fortitude to build a barrier against Lucas's prying. Sean now stood vigilant over him, and for a rare moment Lucas heard the slightest wobble in Sean’s tone. He was sad.

Then in the blink of an eye, Lucas felt a lurch in his stomach and they were on a terrace back at home. The night was clear here, and only the stars and moon were up in the sky. Sean closed the umbrella and shook the rain from it onto the bed of flowers next to hime. Lucas noticed Sean was soaking wet. He had covered only Lucas with the umbrella.

Lucas sat unmoving on one of the benches and let the familiar noise of home overwhelm him until he felt nothing. Liam had first kissed Lucas here on this bench, years ago. He had been so surprised he could only laugh and Liam disappeared for weeks feeling completely embarrassed. The next time they saw each other Lucas would return the kiss to see if what he felt stirring inside himself was real. It was, and it had all started here. This bench would always hold that memory though it was now forever stained with pain and heartache.

Maybe it was always supposed to end like this. Lucas had led Elena along, went behind her back and made a fool of her. He had grown to like her well enough and they had become friends. Then he had gone and fucked that up too. Maybe he deserved this.

Lucas didn’t sleep that night. Or the night after. Or the night after that. He barely got out of bed, barely ate. All he could do was lay in bed, smoke when he was up and drink when he was down. Anything to numb the pain was welcome. Days passed, maybe weeks, as every day seemed to mix together. The house staff did their best to accommodate, as did Sean. But he eventually went back to Costa Brava to prepare for Lucas’s arrival.

Eventually Lucas returned to Costa Brava, moved into his old room that he had shared with both Elena and Liam and re-entered the life he had grown to hate, the parties and the events and being back in the public eye as a spurned husband-to-be practically left at the altar. None of that mattered now anyways. Whatever joy this life had brought him in the past was gone, and it was now just another opportunity to pump himself full of chemical sedation. Every day was a haze without the wards he had built for himself, a flood of thoughts and emotions increased tenfold by the sheer amount of staff and visitors in the castle and in Costa Brava. Every day was an ocean of static to drown in, a white noise that made every day the same joyless existence he would now resign himself to for the rest of his life.

This is based on a character I play in a fantasy game GM’d by a friend. It’s part of a series of short stories based off a 20-card tarot spread meant to guide you through your next year. This is for March and my pulled card, the Eight of Cups.